


and breathe (just breathe)

by thebestworstthing



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Lance (Voltron) Has ADHD, Langst, Overstimulation, Team as Family, hunk/lance if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 13:46:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10765464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebestworstthing/pseuds/thebestworstthing
Summary: His head swims dangerously, thoughts flitting in and out quicker than he can interpret them, it feels like he’s being crushed under the vast amount of stimuli his brain is receiving. Of course, his body’s response is to completely shut down. Which is good when he has the option to go home and sleep until his brain decides to function as normal again.Not so good when he’s training to defend the universe.Lance is completely screwed.





	and breathe (just breathe)

**Author's Note:**

> me, projecting my adhd onto Lance? more likely than you'd think
> 
> honestly i'm too tired to edit this just take it please
> 
> title taken from the song "Breathe (2am)" by Anna Nalick

His head swims dangerously, thoughts flitting in and out quicker than he can interpret them, it feels like he’s being crushed under the vast amount of stimuli his brain is receiving. Of course, his body’s response is to completely shut down. Which is good when he has the option to go home and sleep until his brain decides to function as normal again.

 

Not so good when he’s training to defend the universe.

 

Lance is completely screwed.

 

He misses another shot, his aim a few seconds too late and as a result of his mistake, Keith gets shot out. Vaguely, he registers a snide comment through his helmet but his brain is too unfocused to care. Usually, he’d be snapping back at Keith, but now all he wants is to lie down with some peace and quiet, arguing is the exact opposite of that.

 

Lance doesn’t even remember how he got this overstimulated. Sure, training is hard and requires a lot of focus but that amount of external stimuli is usually not a problem, in fact it’s usually good for keeping him focused, but not today obviously.

 

He shoots again and hits the target this time, the bot deactivates. Besides him, Hunk aims and takes out two bots at once. Lance struggles to stay standing as a different bot sneaks up behind him and whacks his back, thankfully not hard enough to take him out. To his left, Shiro moves, taking a bot out with a well-placed kick to its middle. Keith is still muttering to himself and Lance can hear it through the helmet.

 

It’s all just _too much_. He doesn’t notice when the bot sneaks up on him again and returns for a kill shot. The floor falls away beneath him and he lands hard on the ground beneath the training deck.

 

The landing jars him, enough to return a small amount of clarity in his muddled brain. He hears Keith’s mocking through his helmet and focuses enough to make a jibe back, “ _Still lasted longer than you._ ”

 

His voice sounds far away and distant, the small moment of lucidity fades and he’s drowning again. He manages to push through the thick layer of fog to stand up and walk up to the observation deck, where Keith is waiting with Allura and Coran.

 

By the time he makes it there, the remaining paladins have defeated the bots and are walking upstairs themselves, Keith makes a point to ignore him and had Lance been in his right mind, he would have laughed at the red paladin. Instead, Lance settles for staring down at the floor.

 

Shiro appears, and with him the loud chatter of Hunk and Pidge, it’s loud in a way that makes his ears ring and head ache.

 

 _God_ , this really fucking sucks.

 

They stop talking as soon as they reach the control room, Lance looks up wondering why to find Allura glaring at them all, more specifically, him.

 

“What happened out there? You could barely get past the level of an Altean _child_ without losing two team members.” Allura starts, she sounds angry but Lance has known her long enough to recognise the concern behind her words. “Lance, your focus was completely off. You missed more shots than you hit.”

 

Lance flinches, not because her words are harsh but because of how loud she’s talking. Allura is practically shouting now, voice raised enough so that even the mice have scampered off to find a quiet corner.

 

“Can you please talk a bit quieter?” He asks her softly, fully aware of how his voice cracks but too drained to care.

 

“Why?” She asks, confused, at the same time Shiro says “What’s wrong?” Both of them at full volume.

 

Lance has to try extra hard to resist the urge to scream.

 

He tries to search for the words to make them understand but the fog has multiplied tenfold, his thoughts are nothing more than swirls of smoke blown away in the wind, too brief to acknowledge.

 

“Too much.” He says quietly, voice sounding whiny and childlike. Lance feels pretty childlike at the moment, talking with the tone of a child about to be punished and feeling every bit as vulnerable.

 

He _knows_ they won’t understand what he means, no one in that room can. It’s not their fault that Lance’s brain is wired differently, tuned in to a different frequency to theirs. Of course, Hunk is the only one with a chance of knowing what’s wrong because he’s the only one that knows about Lance’s ADHD and the symptoms it can cause, and even though he may not understand, Hunk has always been unwaveringly supportive of Lance whenever he experiences the worst of it.

 

He mentally wills Hunk to understand, but to his disappointment, the other doesn’t seem to yet.

 

“What do you mean ‘too much’?” Shiro asks quietly. His voice leaks concern and Lance wants to tell him what’s wrong but the words just _won’t come_. He can’t even think to string a sentence together at the minute.

 

“Brain fog.” He mutters, looking down at the floor.

 

“Overstimulated?” Hunk whispers. _Finally_ , Lance thinks. He nods. “Come on, I’ll take you to your room and then explain everything to these, is that okay?” Hunk asks, Lance nods again and lets Hunk lead him down the corridor.

 

His mind zones out and he doesn’t notice they’re back at his room until Hunk has pushed him down onto the bed and started tugging his boots off.

 

“I can do this.” He mutters, to save himself the embarrassment more than anything.

 

“Lance, I’ve seen every part of you, man. Just let me do this.”

 

Lance lets him, too tired to argue.

 

Hunk manoeuvres Lance to standing up and tugs the different pieces of armour off, dumping them in the corner of the room. He then proceeds to tug off the black under suit, leaving Lance stood in just his boxers. He shivers against the cold.

 

Hunk ruffles around in the drawers for a few moments before throwing Lance a pair of sweatpants and a soft t-shirt. Lance pulls them on slowly, struggling to coordinate the movements. Eventually, he’s fully dressed again and Hunk gently pushes him down into the bed and pulls the covers around him.

 

“Get some sleep, I’ll wake you up for dinner and hopefully you’ll feel better by then.” Hunk says on his way out.

 

The door _whooshs_ shut behind him and Lance is left alone in the dark. It’s not until he closes his eyes that he realises how _tight_ they feel; the pressure having built up behind to an almost painful level.

 

With a long sigh, he pulls the covers tighter around him and welcomes sleep.

 

**

 

Hunk should have noticed something was wrong with Lance, his friend has always been outgoing and boisterous but today there had been none of that. Hunk had brushed it off because on the surface Lance has seemed fine, but apparently, he had been wrong.

 

Hunk remembers the first time this had happened, back in their early Garrison days before the two of them had even formed a proper friendship yet. It had been nowhere near as serious, but Hunk guesses that since Lance had ran out of his meds a few weeks ago, the usually repressed symptoms were coming back at an unfathomable rate.

 

Which sucks when you’re millions of miles away from the next dose. Unless the Alteans had some kind of alternative medicine, Hunk makes a mental note to ask Coran about it later.

 

Hunk reaches the observation deck to hear what sounds like an argument. He grits his teeth and pushes open the door, resigning himself to the onslaught of questions. Keith is the first to notice when the door opens.

 

“How is he?” He asks.

 

“He’ll be fine, he just needs to rest.” Hunk says, putting on his calming voice to try and ease some of the red paladin’s stress.

 

“What did you mean by overstimulated?” Allura asks.

 

“It’s because of his ADHD,” Hunk begins but is interrupted by Shiro.

 

“Lance has ADHD?” He sounds disbelieving.

 

“Did you not know?” Hunk says confused because _surely_ Lance would have told them, and even if he hadn’t, wouldn’t they have noticed it in the mind melding exercises. Hunk could always feel it then, the thoughts racing faster than Hunk can even understand them, it gave him an indication of what it was like living with Lance’s brain and he hated it with a passion.

 

“No? I presumed he’d tell us.” Shiro says, and then follows it with, “He doesn’t really act like he’s got ADHD though, does he?”

 

Hunk seethes, but resists taking out his anger by reminding himself of the fact that Shiro isn’t being rude intentionally, he just doesn’t know any better. It’s not much of a comfort but it works enough for him to be able to speak calmly.

 

“He got really good at hiding the symptoms before he started medication but then that ran out a few weeks ago and now the symptoms keep getting worse.” Shiro nods at this, a thoughtful look on his face.

 

“It does explain a lot of Lance’s behaviour though.” He says after a moment.

 

“But what did you mean by overstimulation?” Allura asks again and Hunk realises he never actually answered her question.

 

“Basically, it’s a kind of sensory overload. It means Lance is focusing on too much sensory stimulation and his brain just gives up trying to process it, or at least that’s how I understand it. He described it to me once as being like he’s standing in a room full of different TVs with each one playing a different channel. He tries to focus on them all at once but then he can’t, so he just tunes the noise out.”

 

“How do you know all of this?” Keith asks, genuinely curious.

 

“We were roommates at the Garrison and for the first few months there, Lance wasn’t medicated so he went through this semi regularly. I learnt how to deal with it.”

 

“What kind of medication was he on?” Pidge asks, running a hand through her hair and frowning.

 

“I’m not sure, why?” Hunk responds.

 

“I’m thinking about if there’s any way to duplicate it.” Pidge pushes her glasses up her nose. “Coran, is there any way we could do this? Or maybe even design something else to help with the side effects?”

 

“We could try.” Coran says, looking slightly more gleeful than he should at the thought of that.

 

“That’d be good if it’s possible. I know how much he hates being like this, thanks guys.” Hunk says.

 

“What exactly is ADHD?” Allura asks, “Is it an attention disorder?”

 

“Kind of. It means that Lance struggles with paying attention to things for prolonged periods of time and also has difficulty sitting still for long.” Pidge says before Hunk can respond.

 

“We have something similar to that on Altea, isn’t that right Coran? It was caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain.” Allura says, eyes twinkling softly in the light.

 

“We called it the-” He makes a series of sounds obviously meant to be an Altean word but the castles translation system has decided that word is not translatable, maybe there isn’t an English equivalent of it.

 

“ADHD is believed to be caused by a neurotransmitter imbalance too.” Hunk says, absentmindedly.

 

“Do you think it could be cured in the same way?” Allura sounds thoughtful.

 

“There would need to be a lot of modifications to the system but we could definitely try.” Coran twirls his moustache; his face is pensive and Hunk imagines that he is thinking of the _exact_ changes he would need to make to ensure it would work.

 

Knowing Coran, he could have the whole thing done in one day. And with Pidge’s help, he would be unstoppable.

 

“What exactly is this cure?” Pidge asks.

 

“It’s a version of the sleep pods, only it helps balance out the brain. It’s done every day for about a hundred ticks and acts in a similar way to medication, only much more efficient.” Coran says on his way out. “If we just adjust the timescale and the dosage and input the-” His voice trails out from talking normally to an indiscernible mutter. “Follow me number five if you want to help.”

 

Pidge is out of the room before Coran has even finished his sentence.

 

**

 

Five days Later, Lance stumbles out of the sleep pod after his initial dose and for the first time in months, his mind is blissfully clear.

**Author's Note:**

> leave kudos and maybe consider buying me a coffee here ( http://ko-fi.com/tiredlance ) if you enjoyed


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